#also the leadup to that path ....

[martyrbat]

one path i was debating, the one before bruce ACTUALLY breaks it, is he and khoa never have their snow fight or their rain breakup. they stick together, they train together, they STAY together because of the loop and the trauma bruce faced, the realization that he's in love. love has always fueled him and after losing minhkhoa again and again, after cradling his corpse again and again, he actually chooses khoa. he chooses to believe in his honey-promise of returning to gotham as men instead. and like.... that alone i want to write and but the time loop aspect can very quickly get sidetracked or forgotten about and like... NO idea how to tackle it with the skill it deserves lol

@martyrbat

[warningsine]

Georgian lawmakers on Tuesday voted down a presidential veto of the controversial "foreign agents" legislation, clearing the way for the bill to come into force. 

The law, which has led to weeks of mass protests, would require media outlets and NGOs that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as "pursuing the interests of a foreign power."

Lawmakers voted 84 to 4 to override a veto by President Salome Zourabichvili and pass the bill. Most opposition MPs walked out of the chamber ahead of the vote.

The legislation was put forward by the ruling Georgian Dream party in April and approved by the parliament earlier this month.

The bill has been widely criticized by the EU, UN, NATO and the US. Washington has announced travel sanctions over the measure.

The EU said that it "deeply regrets" the law's adoption. EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was "considering all options to react to these developments."

Why did the president veto the bill?

President Zourabichvili, a fierce critic of the governing party, vetoed the bill on May 18.

In an interview with DW ahead of the veto, she accused Georgian Dream of jeopardizing the country's future and said the law had become a "symbol of a number of laws and measures and rhetoric that is taking Georgia away from its European path."

"What I think is important is that the country continues on its path towards Europe," she said. 

The government has defended the legislation, saying it is needed to ensure transparency and to keep a lid on harmful foreign actors seeking to detabilize the South Caucasus country.

Meanwhile, opponents have labeled the bill "the Russian law" because it is similar to measures pushed through by Moscow to crack down on independent media and dissent. Critics also say the bill aims to appease the Kremlin and restrict media freedoms in the leadup to Georgia's parliamentaly elections in October.

Protests again erupt in Tbilisi

Large crowds gathered outside parliament throughout the day on Tuesday, with a rally planned for the evening. 

There have been repeated clashes between demonstrators and police since the law was first proposed several weeks ago. 

Speaking from Tbilisi, DW correspondent Maria Katamadze described the situation as "very fragile, very volatile."

"This comes after the unprecedented domestic backlash from the streets of Tbilisi where mainly youth, Gen Z and grassroot movements have been protesting for over a month now," she said. "They say this is a national resistance to the government's actions that many critics say is going to damage the reputation of Georgia across the world and damage the relationship with the West."

[streets-in-paradise]

Random Chucky thought of the day:

Forgive me once more, but this is also inspired by Supernatural. i have an old season in the background while i'm doing other stuff.

I remembered of how in the earlier seasons of the show there was a recurrent reminder of how turning into a demon was the biggest fear of Dean. From subtext to a scene that literally throws that in the viewer's face, it was like super clear and presented as such dark posibility. However, in later seasons they made this nightmare come true and Demon Dean was… played as a joke. What was dissapointing tbh.

Now that I think about it, Chucky doing leadup to a posessed Andy that never happened feels very similar to this. For some reason, i fear that if Don ever explores that long established alternative path with a Chucky!Andy, the same could end up happening.

[awakened-dreamers-blog]

Ultrakill Layer 7 thoughts (spoilers obvi)

7-1 /// The Garden of Forking Paths: Great level. Super creepy and off putting, even with having watched the trailers for the level. The first time the mannequins activated for real scared me so bad that my soul fully left my body. The Minotaur showing up the first time also scared the crap out of me. Overall, the level captured the whole "labyrinth" vibe really, really well and the leadup to the Minotaur part of the level was great. Speaking of the boss, its visual design was really great and worked with the lore to make a surprisingly tragic story. The fight itself was a bit finnicky with the trams, but surprisingly easy once I got the hang of it, and the second phase was even easier (a bit too easy, imo).

7-2 /// Light Up the Night: I have mixed feelings about this level. The sound design and visual feel of the level are great, and some of the segments were really cool, particularly the clocktower and the library-looking part. I wasn't a fan of the fact that you could just go anywhere in the level at any time, that felt weird to me. I would have appreciated something akin to the sand in the Greed layer; as it is now, just being able to walk on relatively flat ground feels kinda boring. I have... thoughts on the Guttertanks, but those aren't about the level itself. The ambush when you return to the train station with the bomb was really well done imo. Probably my favorite section of the level was the library section, since the room design allowed for a lot of shenanigans with the sharpshooter pistol and the electric rail, so that wasn't as annoying as the first Guttertank fight.

7-3 /// No Sound, No Memory: Absolutely stellar level. The atmosphere throughout the entire level is excellently moody and eerie, and the lack of jumpscares (except for one) really contribute to the sorrow that pervades the level. The first three blood trees were fun fights I love the gardeny design of the first section. The friendly fire chaos of the last room was a ton of fun the first couple times, although there was a lot of stuttering. I do wish that any kills throughout the room contributed to the blood for the tree, since I died multiple times to the stupid blood puppets. That was really anticlimactic and kinda ruined the mood. Otherwise, a really good level.

7-4 /// ...Like Antennas to Heaven: An interesting boss battle, to say the least. The reveal of the Earthmover at the very beginning was *amazing* and I'm always a sucker for "climbing up a gigantic boss" sequence. The defense system was a fun stationary boss but it was pretty easy. The boss itself was really easy too, once I realized that I was just shooting towards the middle of a circle. Personally, I would have preferred slower moving lasers, more health, and an additional obstacle to fight/dodge. My main critique of the level is that it doesn't feel like a layer climax, at all. The hardest fights of the level were, by far, the ones against the Guttertanks and other normal enemies and not the intense, 1v1 duel that I like so much about the other boss fights. The Metroid Prime-esque countdown escape was really, really cool, though. I just wish the sequence was less about fighting random enemies and more about tough platforming. Also, I know that the golden arm is obviously the eponymous "Godfist" but I'm still not a fan of not getting an arm at the end of the first layer of an act.

Lore: Love how Hakita captured the feeling of a self-perpetuating cycle in the Final War. Reading about the individual stages of escalation was really, really interesting and marched the visual design of each enemy well. Can't wait to see which six-lettered King built the Minotaur for Minos (more than likely the next prime soul).

Mannequins: A fun and surprisingly challenging mix of Filth and Strays with an extra layer of horror. Incredible visual design and animation. I do wish they were a bit less bullet spongey because it doesn't really fit their aesthetic as is, but adding a few extra enemies to compensate.

Guttermen: Great visual design and lore. They're not too hard to deal with on their own, and I'm glad to have another use of the Knuckleblaster (Hakita, please, PLEASE let us map seperate buttons for each arm). When they have a hunch of other fodder around them, they make interesting counterparts to Mindflayers as high-priority targets.

Guttertanks: Ooooh boy. I really like some of the things about them, but I have a lot of issues as well. Having an enemy that forces players to either stay far away or risk a well timed dash to get some blood is an interesting shakeup, but I do think the punch should at least be parryable. As is, the punch feels way too fast to react to, way too high-damage to recover from, and knocks you back like a million miles. For enemies that are supposed to be long-ranged artillery type things, their ranged attacks are surprisingly easy to deal with (especially with the freezeframe rocket launcher) but their melee attacks are way more of a threat and they have way too much health. I would prefer it if they had either significantly less health (or some kind of massive vulnerability, akin to the streetcleaners) or if their melee attack was nerfed and their ranged attacks buffed slightly.

Other thoughts: The new puzzles with the golden orbs is interesting, but I would like if the Whiplash had slightly more of an autoaim. Thank Gabriel that the voids on the puzzle sections don't damage you. Also, my computer isn't the best, but I was having a ton of performance issues during the third and fourth levels. Nothing too crazy or fatal, just some annoying lag and stuttering.

Overall, Violence was a really great layer, one of my favorites. I do think it needs some minor changes and tuning, but I'm excited for the psecret level and the new alternate gun, plus everything else yet to come from Hakita.

[thelogbookproject]

The Unity of Skovlan, Entry 31: The General

The Unity of Skovlan is an upcoming unofficial supplement to Blades In The Dark about the fall and rise of the Skovlander people. This series explores what it is all about in the leadup to its September release.

As we enter the Fracturing Period, the final coastal fortress of Reaxh on the western coast has fallen. Queen Alayne, now attempting to avenge her late father King Aldric, has accepted that there is no longer a path to victory. All there is left is spite. For every inch the Akorosi take, the Skovlanders will make sure they pay for it with lives and treasure and leverage. Without any of the coast left, it is only a matter of time until Stonetable is captured, but that’s not going to be easy. Until that time came, the Skovlanders would fight, all the way up the bitter end. These were the days when the Skovlanders began planting the seeds of future revolution. If Skovlan was going to fall, the Skovlanders never would. The Unity War was ending, but even then, Skovlan looked to the future. One day, this would all matter.

What if the Skovlanders let a castle fall with the Squad hidden deep inside so they can sneak up and assassinate the fusion of Major General Armstrong and Ned Stark? That’s this Mission.

Seriously.

For real.

I conceived of General Teaves, the Ox of Akoros, as mostly Olivier Armstrong, a towering woman whose cold eyes and relentlessly brutal patriotism led her to success after success after success, all while wearing the huge black wolf pelt cloak of Ned Stark and wielding their enormous greatsword. Teaves is probably the single most powerful soldier the Squad will ever have to fight, and if the players still happen to have any qualms about outright assassinating enemy officers, this one is going to be extremely difficult (or the players may just want to give this Mission a pass).

As is introduced in the Opposition section, this is the Imperium’s Southern army, not the only army. Given my lore of Stonetable being the ancient and definitive capitol atop the mountains that cover the northern half of the island, losing the south or forcing the Akorosi out for now won’t change the course of the war — it would have long-term supply ramifications, and obviously affect the lives of the remaining Skovlanders there, but even if this Mission pushed back the entire Imperial army it wouldn’t be enough. That said, Teaves is also likely to be replaced if killed, which is why this Mission is so much more about costing the Imperium something and exacting personal vengeance on a hated foe — not that buying time while the southern army regroups isn’t a benefit.

As we enter the Fracturing Period, there are no longer any Valor rewards for making it back with anyone alive. Come back a failure and there’s no consolation prize. You’ll still get whatever you might earn from the Optionals, but Last Stands are really on the table now.

Additionally, kidnap is a permissible end state for Teaves, but this is a bit of a trap. It is very hard to take Teaves alive, and a couple of the Optionals will be ruinously hard without killing The Ox Of Akoros. It’s there if the Squad is still clinging to a moral objection to being assassins, which is a valid mindset, but at this stage of the war it really limits what can be done, and the players should feel that.

I’ve revealed one of a couple of Optionals that will get the Squad sidetracked from just tracking down and killing Teaves, pushing them to explore Castle Adriack further. I like this one because it emphasizes how the whole strategic point of this is delay. Picking up the pieces of the southern army and restoring it will take time, and the Skovlanders can try to regroup in that window or push their luck hitting the disorganized remnants. The longer the Skovlanders can keep the Imperium split between the two fronts (southern tundra and northern mountains) the longer Stonetable will hold. The Sneaking Mission Optional is going to take a ton of resources, probably accepting a ton of stress from Resisting alarm-increasing Consequences. I’ll say that while all five Areas of the Mission have Clocks, none of them is actually an alarm! This is both blessing and curse. On the one hand, the GM is going to have a bunch of things to tick that aren’t raising an alarm. On the other, the GM doesn’t have to wait to fill a Clock — any Consequence could rain guards on the players’ heads. Of course, given the situation, that would basically be an instant Desperate Position so it would eat up a Risky Consequence to impose that, but the players are always one bad roll from jeopardizing this Optional Objective. The last one is a big danger, as it requires alerting the army that something is happening, but it doesn’t inherently expose the Soldiers. There should be some leeway on this one, in that the literal killing doesn’t have to be obvious, the staging can do it. It’s not actually that tough (as we’ll explore in a minute, The Ox is on the roof turret, and pushing them over onto the soldiers working far below would do it) but it will make escaping much harder, and figuring out a way to do this while also doing the Kidnap path will be challenging.

This is how the players stowed away during the takeover of the Castle, and with a Controlled or Risky Position they’ll probably still be hidden in the Passages leading to the low levels. Finding and using the Passages is the key to the Sneaking Mission, but their unpredictability gives the GM a ton of flexibility to put together setpiece moments. As mentioned here though, don’t get bottled up in the passages or risk a quick death.

This is, ultimately, a bit of staging ground for the final encounter. If the Squad gets in and disables the guards, they’ll have a bit of time to breathe and put things together. The safe represented by the Clock is, ultimately, interesting without being strictly helpful. It isn’t an Optional Objective. If the GM has an idea for a reward, go ahead, but it’s mostly a narrative victory and a thing to have to choose to carry or leave behind. If you’re really looking for a mechanical boost from it, I’d suggest +1 to the next Engagement roll for the morale improvement. The final Feature is a “shortcut” to victory if the players try it. They’ll need to stay hidden as the General comes back in and eventually goes to bed, easier said than done, but if they get there it will make quietly killing Teaves much easier. It’s still no instant-kill, as Teaves’ reflexes and strength will keep them from being flawlessly murdered, but it’s much easier than the next Area’s Clock. That said, if the players do this, they have definitively embraced being assassins, and the “immediately panics and terrifies” Optional is blown, as Teaves likely wouldn’t be discovered until morning, which is hardly immediate.

Teaves knows something is up the moment the Squad is on the stairs to the roof. They don’t know what, and don’t immediately find the Squad or anything, but they’re not at ease. Fighting them is an absolute nightmare — a 12-step Clock is huge for killing a single person, and their immunity to Group Actions will keep everyone on their toes. If the Squad skipped the side Objectives and took the least Stressful paths up, they can probably take Teaves on. If they’re already getting tired, this fight is going to suck. Beyond the Group Action immunity though, the rules are still normal, so it’s not like instantly Desperate or anything. Play carefully and don’t get too unlucky with the rolls, and the General can be whittled down. Plus, once on the roof, the howling wind and the private bedchamber below means the players don’t need to worry about alarms. It’s as close to a private showdown as the Squad are likely to ever have, and the Ox is balanced to fight a full group alone.

The amount of focus the escape requires is very context-dependent. If the players are trying to take Teaves with them, or if the alarm is raised (whether from previous action or from the final Optional Objective) and the way is especially blocked, play it out. If the players are still succeeding on the Sneaking Mission Optional, play it out. Otherwise, probably cut past it.

Next time, we’ll take on a very different Mission: The Siege.

The Unity War releases for PWYW on September 1, 2023. Check out https://tinyurl.com/tuos-details for the rest of this series! Sign up for my Patreon at https://patreon.com/thelogbookproject for a preview, and full early access to the game! See youWednesday!

[editorsusan]

Eight years ago today, my husband and I took a lovely trip to Fort Bragg. I had been under a huge amount of stress at work, and he wanted to take me away from all that for a few relaxing days. We spent lots of time just sitting and watching the ocean to give my psyche a chance to unwind a little. We also did some fun, touristy things like explore shops downtown and ride the Skunk Train.

We also didn't know on July 4, 2013, that I would be getting laid off from my incredibly stressful job in mid-August, about six weeks later, which was actually a blessing because I really didn't want to quit on my own, so getting forced out solved that problem. I had been with that company for eight years.

It wasn't long after that layoff that Anna reached out to offer me an opportunity to work at the Sacramento Bee on-call, which I gratefully accepted. I (like many others) felt honored to work for McClatchy Co.'s flagship newspaper, and I worked hard there, eventually getting promoted to permanent part-time status and then, later, full-time. I went from an on-call copy editor to a Copy Editor I and then Copy Editor II and witnessed many difficult changes as the Bee's copy desk was reduced from a staff of (if I remember correctly) over 40 people who produced not only the Sacramento Bee but also the Modesto Bee and the Merced Sun-Star and later added the Fresno Bee and the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and then was regionalized into a team called News Desk West, which added team members and more newspapers for us to work on from Washington state (with its papers the Bellingham Herald, the Olympia Olympian, the Tri-Cities Herald, and the Tacoma News-Tribune) and Idaho (the Idaho Statesman). In short order McClatchy would also regionalize its copy desk units of its Central region markets as News Desk Central and its Eastern region markets as News Desk East. This was all a leadup to the current consolidation of McClatchy's copy desk operations into a single unit headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., now referred to as the Publishing Center. After many rounds of layoffs and buyouts and downsizing/consolidating/"optimizing," the Publishing Center was comprised of about 60-ish staff members mostly working from home and scattered across every time zone of the U.S.

I had seen and also been part of many rounds of McClatchy layoffs during those years, but every time I always had some path provided to me that allowed me to return to work right away (maybe with a different department, maybe with a different supervisor, like the lovely Rita, etc., but there was always a way back in somehow, still with McClatchy).

And then we got word in March of this year that the Pub Center staff would be decimated once again as McClatchy would be outsourcing the page design tasks to a contractor called EKCS in New Delhi. Our team of about 60 would this time be cut to about 36. And this time I would be laid off with no apparent pathway to return to the team. After eight years with McClatchy my job would be coming to an end. Eight years after I was laid off from my previous job, where I also worked for eight years.

Eight years. Eight years. Eight years. It's like my working life is being carved up into these eight-year chunks. (If there's some hidden significance there, I have no idea what it is.)

I really wanted to make it to at least 10 years with McClatchy, but that doesn't look like it will happen. And I'm still more than 10 years from retirement age, so I'm going to have to find a new career path forward from here. (As of right now I have no idea what that will be, either.)

I'm mentally tired and overwhelmed by the unknown future. I feel relatively certain that things will work out in the long run, but the control freak in me doesn't like the current uncertainty. And I'm just so, so, so tired right now that I'm finding it nearly impossible to focus on looking for a new job while the countdown on my current job gradually runs out. (I think I have 29 work days left as of Wednesday, my first work day this week.)

This life transition is about the only thing that has been on my mind lately, but I try to avoid posting about it here (because if I posted about it as often as I think about it, that's all anyone would ever hear about from me … and that would get pretty darned old for all y'all pretty darned quick).

[lemongogo]

b/nha leaks

[avatar-news]

New official place names roundup!

Here’s a roundup of a bunch of major official place names that have been revealed in recent (or recent-ish) releases, which you might not know if you’ve only seen the original ATLA and TLOK shows where they remained unnamed, along with some cool new locations as well.

❄️ Agna Qel’a

Northern Water Tribe capital city

Etymology: unknown

Source: The Shadow of Kyoshi Chapter Two: The Invitation

🌋 Hari Bulkan

Elite residential district of the Fire Nation capital located in the dormant caldera of a volcano, home to the royal family and other high-ranking nobility

Also known as Royal Caldera City

Together with Harbor City at the foot of the volcano, it makes up the Fire Nation capital

Located on Capital Island

Etymology: Most likely Austronesian, where “hari” means king in Cebuano and Tagalog (related to “haji” in Old Javanese, “hadi” in Bikol Central and Waray-Waray, “adi” in Cuyonon, “ari” in Ilocano and Mansaka, and “ariki” in Maori (Polynesian)) and “bulkan” means volcano in Bikol Central, Dupaningan Agta, Tagalog, Waray-Waray, and Yogad, via Spanish volcán (similar etymological path as the “azul-” root of Azula and Azulon, meaning blue)

Source: Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game

🏝️ Water Tribe Sacred Island

A tiny island located near the equator halfway between the Northern and Southern Water Tribes

For thousands of years, disputes between the two polar tribes were resolved by meeting here

Claimed by the nearby Fire Nation in the leadup to the Hundred Year War

Source: Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game

🐺 Wolf Cove

Southern Water Tribe capital city

Has been through major changes in its history, growing and shrinking between a large city and tiny village multiple times

Etymology: Wolves are one of the few non-hybrid animals in the world of Avatar (along with bears, shout out to Bosco!)

Source: Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game

🐋 Whale Harbor

A prominent city of the Southern Water Tribe in the era of Avatar Roku

Illustrates how the Southern Water Tribe is a federation of many smaller tribes/settlements (for example Wolf Cove and Whale Harbor) each with their own local chieftains

Etymology: Unlike wolves and bears, whales haven’t been seen in Avatar, but they have been referenced (Whale Tail Island and Whale Harbor) so it’s possible they exist

Source: Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game

Most of these come from the recent official Avatar Legends TTRPG, which, if you missed it, also dropped the fact that Fire Lord Sozin had a sister: Princess Zeisan!

[gascon-en-exil]

Through Chapter 10 on my second, more Utility-focused playthrough. Lots of different paths this time.

The story so far: I went up to Chapter 10 specifically because what I was most interested in seeing in the midgame is how the story would handle its convergence points, and now I've experienced two of them from two different angles. The post-Aesfrost invasion arc is half old news from the first demo, but after killing Landroi Sorsley invades and you have to decide whether to side with Aesfrost or Hyzante (I went with Aesfrost - the Utility pick). This battle takes place at the same harbor as Chapter 1, only at night and in the rain. The rain actually matters for some of the mage characters...although I suspect that which side you pick for this story split only affects who the enemy is in this particular battle. It ends with Exharme popping up out of nowhere to say he captured Wolffort while you were away, foreshadowing Hyzante's magical purple bombs and being frustratingly badass as usual (he is the Camus equivalent for Benedict's route, as I've already seen). Then he just...leaves, and sets up exposing Sorsley's illicit salt trade to get the story back on track, along with Cordelia helping Roland escape the castle only for Benedict to have him fake his death as in the other route. For Chapter 9 I chose to transport the illegal salt which led into a second nighttime battle in the rain, this one on a map with a lot of variable elevation vs. Travis and Trish's bandit group, who are apparently just the only group of bandits in Norzelia since they pop up wherever the plot needs them to. I wonder how that'll be handled once I recruit them? Anyway, the salt goes to Frederica's uncle Svarog - I assume Exharme's counterpart in Aesfrost as a Camus figure - and after refusing to reveal Roland's identity to him I had to do a random arena fight to recoup the losses of pissing off the client. That's the second Chapter 10 I've seen set in an arena, identical in all but aesthetics and opponent (here Rufus, the mercenary elsewhere seen in Silvio's employ) to the one in the other route vs. Sorsley. At a bit more of a stretch this leads into both Serenoa and Sorsley getting calling before the Saintly Seven, where Sorsley is indicted for his salt trade and then promptly executed by Exharme - no trial of any kind necessary. Once again, Serenoa finds himself filling the vacant seat in the Saintly Seven, and tasked with getting rid of the Roselle under his family's protection.

Impressions on the story: I continue to be impressed, although it is sometimes a little transparent that the narrative has to force itself back into a linear path rather than branching further outward. Nothing feels particular egregious yet, maybe just a little rushed in places and random in others. On the other hand, it's good to see how different story splits give screentime to different members of the game's massive cast. Benedict's route dumps the knowledge of Clarus's underground arena right at the end to set him up as the third-to-last boss, but here I got to see and actively participate in it. On the flip side this route seems to have Sorsley's aide Booker disappear offscreen (he's killed in the other version of Chapter 9 I did last time) and hasn't made any mention of Silvio since he capitulated to Aesfrost. The world dumps on Roland even more, as in not revealing his identity to Svarog he's stuck having to act as the Dawnspear in a prize fight. The leadup to Sorsley's non-trial in this route also gives him a brief moment to praise Hyzante's happy populace, which I already know is going to turn into the major hook for his route. Days ago I saw people on Discord describing Roland's route as his being brainwashed by a cult...but that seems too simplistic an interpretation, in this game or in general.

Gameplay: I have all the conviction-based recruits now (except Maxwell since I think he's only available later on), although I've only used some of them sparingly because I'm trying to keep levels equal. Ezana is even better here than she was in the first demo, but Medina doesn't have much of a place in my army as she's an item-based healer and I rarely have the money to spend on consumables. Groma the dodge tank and Flanagan the flying tank are vastly more useful than Lionel who appears to be some kind of debuffing tank, and Picoletta's best use is oddly to have her decoy distract enemies since her other skills are so weak. I've only used Quahaug the time mage once, but he's got skills that are the equivalent of (from Fire Emblem) Warp, Foul Play, and a time rewind that can work as a heal so he's got fantastic support potential. The enemy scaling in New Game+ and the sheer variety of playable characters keep gameplay feeling fresh even on repeat playthroughs - and good thing too, as I'll need several more runs to see everything.

[missmarthanightingale]

so i’m rewatching s11 bc i wanted to figure out some stuff about ryan, but then i got distracted by my obsession with jodie’s doctor, so here are some Thoughts about how & why she doesn’t discuss her past over the course of the first four episodes.

in twwfte, she comes crashing through the train roof an amnesiac.  she remembers some things, but very little about herself - not even her name!  but she’s also very open at the start, cheerfully sharing whatever information she does have, even talking in some depth about what regeneration feels like which has literally Never Happened.  she’s not hiding at all.  at some point in the leadup to the confrontation with t’zim-sha on the crane, she remembers exactly who she is, & doesn’t shy away from it.  she is utterly herself in that moment.

but then grace dies.

grace dying, the doctor remembering, & the immediate crisis ending all happen more or less simultaneously, which makes it a bit tricky to analyze what went down.  the doctor was pretty open about sharing stuff before regaining her memories, but that was very much on her terms; by the time things have calmed down enough for people to be asking her questions, circumstances have changed.  but here’s what i think happened.

the doctor was still fucked up about bill & missy when they regenerated, but tuat had set them on the path towards healing.  she immediately encounters grace, who is brave & brilliant & who takes care of her, more than the others do, & who is kind of enjoying this adventure, quite visibly.  throughout the episode, the doctor is open, enthusiastic & largely optimistic.  she’s like this right up until grace dies the same night they met, doing exactly the brave, reckless sort of thing that one would expect the doctor’s companions to do.

after her confrontation with t’zim-sha, the next shot of the doctor is when she finds the others gathered around grace’s body, with ryan breaking down while graham tries to hold him, looking up at the doctor with a heart-wrenching expression on his face; not blame, not at all, but shock & grief which she can’t help but respond to.  this is an awful reminder of what happened with bill, & now the person she connected with most over the episode is gone.  this is the point where ryan, graham, & by automatic extension yaz, stop being her allies & relative equals.  they’re something she’s Responsible for, instead, & not in the sense that companions are.

by the time they start asking questions, she’s about ready to move on.  she has no intention on seeing these people again; she likes them well enough, but as far as she’s concerned they’re a temporary presence in her life.  if she was going to invite anyone along, it would have started with grace, & it died with grace, because i don’t think she’d ever have chosen to travel with people who’d lost something because of her.  why burden these temporary strangers with the weight & complexity of The Doctor, especially when she doesn’t really want to get into it anyway?  she’s leaving soon, so what would be the point.

& then, of course, she goes & takes them with her.

the number one goal in ghost monument is to get to the tardis & get her accidental kidnappees home.  that is explicitly what the doctor wants to accomplish in this episode.  they are even more her Responsibility than they were before, they are not there on purpose or by choice, they are still temporary presences.  so she doesn’t share, beyond the fairly meaningless anecdotes the doctor constantly throws out to perfect strangers, & she maintains an aggressively cheerful demeanour.  she’s treating them not as her companions but as Plucky Civilians Of The Week, because as far as she’s concerned that’s what they are.  of course they’re more than that, her minor breakdown & the emotional support they provide at the end is proof enough, not to mention she’s already coaching them in Appropriate Tactics for Associates Of The Doctor, but she is not ready to accept that yet, especially in the aftermath of grace & bill dying.

which is probably why the tardis then refuses to bring them home!

they end up in, what, 14 other places before landing in rosa?  the tardis is definitely doing that on purpose, forcing the doctor to grow attached to these people whether she likes it or not, & encouraging them to grow attached to her in turn.  it’s clearly working, since this episode involves her trusting them enough to send them off on their own, but she’s still in denial here, telling them that she needs to handle something here & they’re welcome to wait in the tardis while she does it.  this is really a ‘let me run a quick errand on the way’ scenario.  she still fully intends to take them home & leave them there, even if she might be starting to regret the necessity.

& it all culminate in arachnids, where she gets them home.  the tardis’ plan has worked, with both sides extremely hesitant to let that be the end of things.  yaz invites her for tea & she literally cannot say yes fast enough.  they get tugged on the sleeve by a mystery & none of them can stop themselves from diving headlong into it.  but still she can’t ask them to come with her, instead resigning herself to travelling alone.  they have to ask her, & before she accepts she gives them a warning.

that’s the closest she comes to telling them about herself.  warning them that she might not be able to keep them safe, implying that she’s failed to protect others like she failed to protect grace.  did they hear her?  maybe.

but it took so long to decide that they were going to stay.  they’ve already settled into their dynamic, & the doctor doesn’t want to damage that.  she likes the dynamic they have going, she definitely doesn’t want to rock the boat with difficult revelations at this stage, when she’s so suddenly been saved from the prospect of travelling alone.  at this point it’s just easier to keep the charade going, which she’ll keep up for the rest of the season, trying all at once to escape her past & keep from scaring her friends & avoid complicated questions which might end up with her all alone.

anyway, since this is clearly going to be a theme in s12, i thought it might be a nice time to look back at how it started!

[ask-jaghatai-khan]

Upsilon-28

A fanfic showing off my character, the Lord-Archmagos Chertovsky Upsilon-28, from my Sect of the Revelation Mechanism.

Read below the cut, or on my other blog.

Image of Quartermaster Rho by TomisJB

“Are you assured of this procedure’s safety, my Lord-Archmagos?” the adept asked, his half-modulated voice subdued yet still retaining but a hint of mortal apprehension.

Archmagos Chertovsky did not respond. Not at once. Like an inert golem of tangled metal, he stood with his inhuman eyes fixed on the suspension tank in front of him. Within the amniotic fluid of that arcane structure floated a figure in stark contrast to the elder tech-priest’s own. Whereas Chertovsky Upsilon-28 was a hunched being with an ill-defined silhouette broken by so many layers of intricate augmetics, the being within the tank was an unadorned human. More than human, even – perfection. They stood a head taller than any typical mortal, with a muscled physique somewhere between the lithe form of a trained assassin and the unstoppable power of one of the Emperor’s own Angels of Death. A dormant face like the visage of a masterwork statue, pale with fresh tissue and possessing a bone structure more fearsome than any living man or woman lulled atop the divine form.

Not one of the myriad trusted adepts within the operating room would comprehend the thoughts going through the Archmagos’ mind. Beyond the simple fact that the processors supplementing their more “youthful” brains were insubstantial compared to Chertovsky’s own databanks, they couldn’t know the depth of emotion felt by that otherwise cold and impassive tech-priest.

It was him. The figure in the tank, for how much it resembled no human who had ever lived, was him. Within the enhanced and perfected features of that vegetative husk hid the subtle markers of what the Archmagos had once been. He could remember, however dim those memories were – the shape of his nose, of his brows, the fine details of bone structure in those areas which had seen the least amount of modification. It was like those depictions of Imperial saints crafted by artists long after their subjects had passed into legend, idealizing the forms of men and women who had been but scarred wretches in their true lives.

The strange feelings that Chertovsky wrestled with in silent contemplation were made all the more powerful by the knowledge of his own current degradation. He had not been as diligent of late with the upkeep of his augmetics. Chertovsky Upsilon-28 was a being who preferred careful symmetry, efficiency, and greater thought given over to the aesthetics of his bionic enhancements than some more utilitarian members of the Martian cult. Yet in recent months, at the leadup to this procedure, he had focused on nothing more than ensuring he had the right tools for whatever task was at hand, his cyberized form lapsing more and more into an ill-defined morass of mechadendrites and layered servos. Not even of the highest quality, either, just simple factory-standards. This was his sacrifice – he’d waited for so long, he’d saved up so much, in resources and knowledge and all that was needed to perfect this great transformation.

What a shame, Chertovsky thought then as he pushed such mortal sentiments from his mind for the time being, fixated on the task at hand. You shall not be whole for long, creature. He spoke to his own un-twin. However fine that flesh was, it was still but a foundation for far greater enhancements.

—

Looking like a diminutive pest, a waylaid rat, the youth stood in the corner of the whitewashed room. They were an adolescent, almost an adult, but the with way they seemed so out of place, so fearful of their surroundings – they could not have looked more like a child if they’d tried. Robes of Martian red covered their wastrel form, but they were not the holy vestments of a tech-priest.

This place was so much different from anywhere that young boy had ever seen. Far removed from the brutal, industrial maze that dominated any civilized tract of Mars, this room was clean, sterile, almost comforting in its soft and bare décor. The youth had seen medical rooms before, but a handful of times, yet the quality of the Mechanicus’ own facilities was astounding. A simple waiting room in a surgical center was as a cathedral to the boy.

Sunken, flitting eyes darted to the steel door at one end of the room, as a prominent beep announced the arrival of the individual he’d been waiting for.

“Chertovsky – Germani—” the figure spoke as they entered, in a voice that was near musical in its synthesized smoothness, “You are the last one today. It is good that you made it.”

Compared to the wiry young human known as Germani Chertovsky, the being which now dominated the waiting room held little to reflect that it had once been human itself. This was Ben-Sheva Stith, though the use of his full name was reserved as an honor for those aspirants who managed to gain acceptance into the Mechanicus. To all others, he was Stith-E200, Magos Biologis and Ordinator to those myriad souls who sought to find purpose within the Machine God’s holy embrace.

Stith was a monstrous being, made all the more freakish by what parts of him were still in facsimile of humanity. Yet his charges did not fear him. Rather, they envied him. Stith had assembled his body in a bulky form that almost evoked the might of one of the Emperor’s great power-armored warriors, looking like a bronze statue come to life. From his back sprouted a mantle of servo-arms like the branches of a metallic tree, and his unmoving face was a mask of polished marble-hued stone with eyes like gleaming aquamarines. Yet where the tech-priest might have had normal legs, instead between the gaps in his crimson robes could be seen glimpses of his almost insectoid lower half. Stith’s centaur-like form, both majestic and intimidating, was a testament to what any mere mortal could become through the grace of the Omnissiah.

“Ave Deus Mechanicus.” Germani bowed, looking even smaller next to the grand form of the Ordinator.

“Against all odds you have completed your training as a novice and shall soon be inducted as a Rassophore within the holy order of Mars. This is a time for rejoicing, if ever such mortal emotions are to be indulged, Chertovsky!” Stith counseled the boy, “You shall soon be free of the frailties of your crude flesh and brought into the mechadendrites of the Machine God.”

The boy just kept his gaze lowered, though he gave a vigorous nod of understanding. Truth was, he felt as if he were about to throw up. It wasn’t all fear – the knowledge that his long transformation from a being of flesh to a being of iron would soon start proper via the most direct means was daunting, for sure, but he was still enthusiastic. Beneath simple red robes there was the form of a human who had seen ails beyond their years, and Germani longed to be free of the limitations of his base tissue.

“So tell me, Chertovsky, what will you give up?” the Ordinator asked then, instruments whirling about his head on their hydraulic stalks, funneling myriad unknown data-readouts into Stith’s processors, analyzing the charge in front of him.

“What?” the novice asked, somewhat dumb in his tone.

“Come, mortal, you know,” Stith waved his brassy hand, “Upon your ordination you shall receive your first core bionics. Spinal enhancements and neuro-ports and those basics which shall see your path towards enlightenment eased in these initial steps. But this is not fully standardized. You must choose something else to give up. A sacrifice of flesh to the Machine God.”

Germani looked about the room as if the answer might be written on the wall somewhere. He had indeed thought long about this choice, though now just as it was to be made, his mind had been flushed clear of all thoughts.

“M-maybe – maybe my legs,” the novice gestured down, “Like the Skitarii.”

He spoke of the Tech-Guard, the line warriors of the Mechanicus. To a soul they replaced their lower legs with durable augmetics, to honor those first nomads of Mars whose flesh and bones had been scoured on their long treks through the red sands. Germani himself just thought about the acute pain in his own legs. He was often in pain, though to the point where he had long since adjusted to the constant aches within his body, dulling them into one subconscious sense of weakness. Beneath his sturdy work-boots was skin afflicted with sores and callouses, bones compressed and tendons strained from an upbringing within a Martian landscape which was holy to the tech-priests but near unlivable to any normal lifeforms.

“A noble choice, and a popular one,” Stith might have grinned were his face not set in stone, “The prerequisite enhancements to your spinal column shall ensure you will not be hindered by these replacements, and they shall be only of benefit to you. But can you think of nothing else?” he asked then, trying to beckon some zeal out of the timid boy.

Germani thought again and considered how even now the world seemed lopsided. His left eye, which had been singed by a plume of sparks when he’d been but a child, and even now gave him little more than vague shadows in place of genuine sight.

“My left eye?” the novice offered, “So that my sight might be more pure?”

“Also good, and also common,” the Ordinator approved, “We may do both surgeries, if that is the offering you are willing to make?”

But Germani’s mind was racing now, and he was so aware of all the acute pains and ills which he had put up with his whole life, brought about by his growth on a world of poison, ash, sand, and steel.

“My hands, maybe?” he suggested, “Or my lungs? Maybe my stomach so I’ll no longer be a slave to hunger?”

Stith raised his hand, and the boy stopped at once. Yet when the Magos spoke, his synthesized voice was absent anything but pride.

“There will be time for such things later on in your journey. This is but one offering, one ascension which you shall make today. Though your ardor is laudable. Nurture that feeling. Couple it to your lust for knowledge, and one day you might find unity with the divinity of the Omnissiah.”

With that, the tech-priest beckoned for the youth to follow him to the next room. Though he had not yet been given his new name, Germani thought many times after, as all of his order did, that his rebirth as Chertovsky Upsilon-28 began not when he donned his clergy robes, but when he laid down upon that operating table.

—

The Lord-Archmagos oversaw the dissection of his own homunculus with exacting rigor. Half the time, it was not the ministrations of his trusted adepts or the automated algorithms of the surgical servitors that progressed the operation, but his own sterilized mechadendrites. These younger tech-priests were some of the best available, to say nothing of their loyalty – Chertovsky had contracted their services from Set-E299, apprentice to his old Ordinator and one of the few individuals on Mars the Archmagos could count as a true “ally” – yet still their skills paled when put up to some of Chertovsky’s most ironclad specifications.

Layer by layer the unneeded tissue of the grandiose clone-body was stripped away in preparation for its encasement in divine metal. Like any experienced Magos Biologis would confirm, not all flesh was so impure or antithetical to the Machine God’s designs. It was but one aspect of the myriad systems through which that holy Order expressed itself, though prone to failure and degradation. As such, but a handful of organs and the like would be kept from this corpse – the simplistic efficiency of such structures as marrow, certain neurons, and hormonal regulators. In time they would be upgraded by supplements of steel and copper and glass, but they would be left intact. The rest – the muscle, the unneeded bones, the vestigial tracts – would be recycled.

Cloning was in itself not a difficult task if one was not looking to create life. To grow a shell was simple, and drew upon long traditions of Imperial science dating back to the Emperor himself. Still, the procedure that Archmagos Chertovsky Upsilon-28 intended to undergo was not so standard. Radical, some might say. Yet it was necessary. All of his progress as a tech-priest had led to this moment. Some on Mars thought him dead, for how long he had been absorbed in his own calculations, cut off from the greater machinations of the Cult. It was time for his second rebirth. Like the emergence of the Omnissiah, and the crafting of the ancient warriors of Terra – Custodian, Space Marine, and the like – Chertovsky was preparing for a metamorphosis. Decades worth of valuable resources had gone into the gene-crafting and augmetic specs for this new body. It almost seemed like a waste, even to the Archmagos, but what was one masterwork body compared to all the industry of the Imperium? This was a form suitable to the ongoing work of someone as ambitious as Chertovsky Upsilon.

Flesh disappeared, replaced or covered by layers of technological augmentation. The corpse became a skeleton of metal and wire, before the outer plating was affixed. For how much the Archmagos had dwelled on this design, it was rather simple. At its core it kept a humanoid form, yet that was but the chassis for the true ingenuity of the shell. Numerous ports and mechadendrite-mountings would allow for all the adaptability and modularity a senior Magos would expect and demand, while the central unit retained a degree of strength, of majesty. This was enhanced further by the final addition – the Abeyant. Like the shell of an isopod, the outer casing loomed about the skull-like visage of the husk’s face, before arcing back in broad segmentae down to the waist. Not just a mechanism for locomotion and adaptation alone, equipped as it was with repulsor-stabilizers and even more servo-ports – it was the main housing of Chertovsky’s primary obsession…

A wise soul once said that the most key step along the Quest for Knowledge was in fact learning how to learn, and the Lord-Archmagos had taken that concept into his synthetic heart. Where other tech-priests might become enamored by more “impressive” technologies, Chertovsky’s earliest training had been as an augmeticist. Risking his very life, he had delved into the ways one could enhance their own brain, expanding databanks and supplementing processing power. From thereon, all other tasks had seemed simple by comparison. Once one could manipulate the very core of their being – their means of accruing knowledge – no further obstacles were ever so insurmountable.

As such, the Abeyant of Chertovsky’s awaiting shell was the home of its multi-brain. Not just a single casing with neuro-uplinks, but a chain of multiple wetware cogitators assembled with painstaking precision by the Archmagos himself. In a moment of rather base lust, Chertovsky wondered what that high would feel like – to leave behind this venerable but utilitarian body and jack-in to the computational power of that hardware.

It might kill him, but that was of little concern.

A great many hours later, and at least one changing-out of the assistant adepts, the work was at last complete. Or rather, everything but the final step.

The body had been crafted. From a being of cloned flesh had been forged a suitable masterwork of steel. Its core was almost reminiscent of a Skitarii warrior in its semi-skeletal armored form, though additional layers of plating in several sections gave the suit a more martial appearance. From a harness about the waist emerged the stumps of numerous ports that would soon be host to whatever tangle of mechadendrites the Archmagos might require, though still the body retained its arms and legs in honor of what it had once been. The face was like a hybrid between a skull and a gas mask, its goggle-like eyes unlit and dormant, flanked by several lenses to allow for an impressive range of enhanced sight. Despite being laid on its back within the operation-scaffold, the body was almost sat up due to the size of the Abeyant on its back, like an upended turtle. Coupled with the broad mantle of the form’s shoulders, the metallic hood of the mounted processor provided an impressive silhouette, while the port-studded and armored carapace gave the whole figure impressive size and solidity. It looked somewhat ungainly, but that would be fixed once all the needed mechadendrites were attached.

“It is time.” The Archmagos said, more to himself than the nearby assistants.

“A triumph of artifice, m’lord!” the lead adept lauded. His own form was reminiscent of a Sicarian guard, and far better assembled than the mess Chertovsky had allowed himself to become in his single-minded focus of late, yet even that younger tech-priest’s impressive shell could not hold a lumen to the creation that sat just behind a layer of sealed glass.

“Engage the final routines. I take my leave.” Chertovsky said, shambling over to the airlock.

“Are you assured of your safety, m’lord?” the adept pressed, though he did not stop his superior, “What are we to do in case of complications?”

“Irrelevant details. I have composed the final algorithms myself,” the Archmagos replied, stepping into the first hall of the sterilization chamber and turning to meet the glass eyes of his assistant, “The commendations for you and your associates have already been sent to Magos Set. If this operation results in my expiration, it shall not impact your rewards.”

There was a pause then, and so Chertovsky concluded that their exchange was over, and yet – quite against all etiquette of the Mechanicus – the adept asked a final question. A base question, but one that almost managed to halt the Archmagos in its sincerity.

“M’lord – are you afraid?”

Chertovsky paused for but half a second before he pushed the button to seal the airlock. Beneath a hooded miter of Martian red, a static face of wires and lenses could do nothing to convey emotion. Yet within the modulated voice of the Archmagos there was a timbre of something great. An almost human emotion.

“Not anymore.”

Lord-Archmagos Chertovsky Upsilon-28 pressed the button, and was alone. Within the next room, an operating mounting awaited him. Bending to his neural inputs, Chertovsky saw his various supplemental readouts go dead as he detached the case that contained what remained of his brain from all ports but his locomotive motors. He proceeded into the surgery theater and entrusted his mind to the pre-programmed hands of his servitors.

—

It was an uncommon thing for a tech-priest to dream. Periods of dormancy might occur, but to dream required that the core cogitator – the brain – should slip into an unconscious state. If they so wished, a cyborg of the Mechanicus might “sleep” and awake an indefinite amount of time later as if no time had passed at all.

With this sacrifice are you brought into the fold of the Machine God. With this augmentation of your body is your soul made more pure.

But Chertovsky indulged himself. There was no real way to regulate his sensory inputs as his brain itself was handled, and so a quick injection of some anesthetic helped to ease the process along. His mind swam within currents that had been long forgotten to him – as if he could dip for but a moment into the cerebral waters of the Immaterium itself.

How long until I am like you?

Are there any limits to the Omnissiah’s path? You say I must keep some of my flesh – but when is flesh superior to iron?

To have one’s very grey matter manipulated, even while under sedative, was a surreal experience. One did not “feel” anything, and yet they felt even the slightest disturbance as if it touched at their very soul.

Are you afraid?

This is but one offering – one ascension – which you shall make today.

Man and Machine. This union between our two empires. For from humanity are our souls born, and through the godlike Machine are they made strong.

You do not understand. I see the true potential of this crude matter. This was my first step. I have learned how to learn.

There was a change. A switch. Something connected, something came online. Chertovsky could not know yet how long the surgery had taken, but it was as if his mind had forgotten its own senses. Bare inklings of readouts – felt more than seen – were like breaths of pure air to a forgotten prisoner.

Are you afraid?

The flesh is weak. It is pain.

By the Omnissiah you are anointed. By the Omnissiah are you reborn.

Are you dreaming?

Awake.

Beyond the glass of the surgical theater, the assisting adepts watched the servitor arms retreat from their charge. Hissing and clanging sounded as stabilizers and therapeutic regulators detached.

[CONNECTIONS ONLINE]

The monitor readout was confirmed by one of the adepts.

[CORE REACTOR EQUALIZED. NEURAL SIGNATURE STABLE.]

“Finalize.” The lead adept gave the one order needed, and his compatriot entered the code to end the automated routines and release the Archmagos’ shell from its bonds.

Within the sockets of Chertovsky’s silver, skull-like face, electric blue lights flickered to life.

[mauserfrau]

Spiraling To Meet Me - Bordertober

Tonight: Tyreen v. other people.  Framed as her dealing with massive spoilers from Satellite.  Contains: blood, gore, death, referenced suicide, medical stuff and... [see tags]

The first person she ever met, she killed.

He was dying.  There wasn’t anything she could do to save him.  He went into her as a flash of syrup and heat.  She’s never been sure how she recognized him as a he in the brief moment she knew him through her mother’s skin.

He left her dizzy with delight as she sprawled there in Leda’s sandy glass remains and the air coral rattled against the rift of sky in the temple roof.

Troy, too stunned and hurt to cry, rattled too.

*

She told Dad: “I didn’t mean to!”

It was kind of true.  She didn’t mean all of it.  Mama was dying, same as a manta gored in a trap.

That part, she meant.

The little fish just hadn’t realized Leda was dead.  Tyreen got him with the rest.

She hadn’t had any idea before he evaporated in her leech.  

*

Nobody else realized.  There was no crystal clump of sand that gave away what Tyreen had done.  Or if there was, no one noticed while they carried Mama out of temple in buckets and bottles.  She never saw it, anyway.  She just climbed up the toppled stones along the path that one more time, remembering not to eat the very small larvae and worms because they could still become big things, and then there could be more.

She also still licked her lips when she thought about him.  Maybe she couldn’t have touched him, but she could have heard him, seen him, smelled him when he was just born and still wet.

Instead she ate him and he was gone except for this vague sense memory that crawled around on her tongue and the bottom of her own belly.

*

She didn’t stay away from the grave like Dad.  Mama wasn’t there.

She didn’t go to the grave after midnight like Troy.  Troy said Mama wasn’t there.

Sometimes when the storms roiled over the valley, she listened the air coral shuddering in the wind.  Her mouth watered and she balled her marked hand into a fist.  

Having another baby wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world.  No, that was clearly her trying to prove as much to herself reading books out of the medical suite that made her blush and cringe.

She was supposed to be stronger than blushing and cringing.

She realized though that she might have been biased when it came to what was and was not awful about pregnancy.  She had never not eaten for two.

*

She wouldn’t say she met anybody from her family.  They were always just there, until Mama wasn’t.  Dad tasted rich, Mama stale as recycled air.  Troy held no flavor or sensation outside of his bone-leaf skin and skittering pulse.  

Oh, she tried to eat him too.  Just once with any seriousness.  What if all of her brothers tasted that delicious? 

Tyreen wrapped her arms and her leech around him, pouring herself against his body and begging him to slosh back, fill her instead of the other way around.  

Instead, she drained into him, slow and crystal damp, even though she hardly had enough to share.

“It’s OK,” he told her, gently scratching at her fingers.  ���We can go outside again soon.  You won’t have to be hungry.”

Back on the couch, Dad laughed at something on his old video screen.  

*

Troy had put on one of the old, airy tracks that Mama had liked to play after dark in the summer.  He was trying to sing with it and maybe Tyreen had tried a little bit too.  At least, she was whistling along under her breath when— 

“Boy, you shut that off!” And a crash so sharp and musical Tyreen thought at first it must have come from the speakers.

She peered into the front room to find Troy rattling against the wall.  One of the good drinking glasses oozed down the wall.  

Tyreen cleaned it up without complaining and Troy vanished, same as the liquor vapors.

*

She put her marked hand down beside Dad’s head.

He startled awake, stared up at her, tried to smile.

“Throw anything at Troy again I’ll do to you what I did to Mama.”

She doesn’t remember what he said to her, besides calling her Starlight.  That might have been all it was in the end.

Tyreen stalked off.  Her heart slammed in her chest and her joints felt all slippery.

It had taken her days to decide to say anything.  It wasn’t on impulse like hunting or dodging or staying up way too late watching video clips of little fish fetuses kick.  

She guessed she just didn’t care about Troy in that particular impulsive way what would have let her subsume him.  It wasn’t like he was any good at hunting, after all.

When she got to Mama’s grave, she spit up and coughed.  She didn’t cry.  Crying was dumb.

Nobody followed her to ask if she’d shed anymore teeth or eaten anymore brothers.

And they wouldn’t know any of those things unless she told them.

*

Years passed before the one time she almost did.  Troy was in a bad way, feverish and unsteady on his feet.  She half-carried him to the bathhouse and heated the water up as high as it would go while she stripped him since he couldn’t seem to get his clothes off himself.  They climbed into the water together and talked about Keats for a while.  He said she looked different.  Tyreen laughed at him for taking so long to notice.  Then she untied his hair and pressed him against her chest, both of their hearts cranking in the swell of warmth from the water.  She rested her hand on his empty shoulder as his breath tickled her skin.

“You ever get lonely?” she asked.  It seemed like it might be kind of an OK leadup.

“Yeah,” he answered.  “I don’t even know what I’d do with another person ‘round here.  How about you?”

“Me? What? No.  No of course not.”

The next part should have been I’m stuck with you, aren’t I?

But Tyreen said nothing.

*

The second person she met, she killed.

And the third.

And the fourth.

And all the rest.  There were nine Maliwan researches altogether and Troy only got one, the one that grabbed him.  The guy looked like he was feeling Troy up to Tyreen.  Mostly, he pissed her off.

She wouldn’t have liked to have eaten him .  Instead, she sang through the rest, sucking them down.  The living bruise underneath her skin had them in gushes of fear and the kissed-out brightness of their wonder.  Some were savory, others liquid tart.  When they were all gone, she twisted on the toes of her boots and went down.

The rain stirred over her and the mud.  She thrilled with what she’d gotten from them, flavors and memories of screams and not wanting so hard her mouth water.  Actually, it was hardly damp, at least before Troy came around and tried to get her to stop laughing by tickling her feet— what a dumb thing to try, but it worked.

They knelt together in the rain, surrounded by strangeness and dead bodies made of sand.

*

It took hours to stash and secure their booty.  They could only carry so much at one time, so they took the silliest, prettiest things like rings and name tags and somebody’s pocket knife that wouldn’t have been useful for trimming even tiny pieces of air algae, but it was new.

They hiked back over storm-slippery stones, hardly five sentences between them on the way.

It was when the lucernae on Mama’s grave came into view that the slippery twinge surfaced in her joints.  Tyreen paused, scenting the air out of instinct.  There was only home and water.  Her hand went to her neck and she sighed.

No, something else fought to surface.  Probably just her hunger returning.

She wondered, if only for a moment: what if she hadn’t eaten the intruders? What would she be doing now?

Talking or waiting or something.  She wouldn’t have a new pocketknife.

*

Tyreen set the imaging equipment to warm up.  Troy had taken a sharp blow to the belly and they needed to make sure nothing in him had popped.

The control console had broken a long time ago, and they’d patched the general computer in with some old optical cable.  That meant that anything they tried to read out of the databanks and not existed would show.

Tyreen realized she’d been the last person in the medical suit and she’d left a rather gruesome birth video cued up. 

Troy, leaning sideways on the table said though, “Oh.  My bad.  I was just thinking about...” He yawns.  “Stuff.”

“Yeah? I mean, whatever.  It’s a thing that happens, right, killer?” And she laughs, trying to stifle the crash in her heart.

*

The third or fourth person she meets on Pandora is a barkeeper who asks her name and how she takes her whiskey.  Tyreen  sits at the side of the bar, dazed and trying not to smile.  She’s pretty sure the whiskey she gets isn’t whiskey at all.  Anyway, it doesn’t smell like Dad’s, but it is in a real glass lowball and it makes her lips sting.

She thinks she should wait for Troy to get out of the can, but if she takes a sip herself he can’t ask her to toast.

She drums her fingers on the fine chips along the bottom and remembers.

“Yes?” says the bartender.

“Huh? Yes, what?”

“You look like you’re a million miles away.”

Tyreen cranes her head to the side.  That’s a Troy question.  Not a... random person question.

Right?

Right.

Besides, then she has to go and add, “Haven’t named the little guy yet.” She jerks her thumb to the calico bundle in an old apple crate.  “Was gonna wait till he turns three months.  Never know around here.  But hey, now I never have to be lonely again.” She laughs.

Tyreen presses her fists to her knees.  She will not blush.  She will not cry.  She won’t say yes of course that’s what it is, because it is a flickering tender place.

Part of her wants to eat this woman and her son.

But it takes more of her self-control than she’d like just to keep her face steady, just to think.  “Oh, I get it.”

Fuck.

Tyreen smiles.

“Does he like music? I could go for some tunes.”

“Sure.  What kind?”

“After dark in the summer.”

Apparently, that’s a fine enough answer.  Troy comes back to the bar to find her gone in her glass and a softly thudding baseline.

[softderekhale]

from the archives: snippets of a sterek pacrim au

hey y’all! i definitely haven’t been super active on this blog or tumblr at all lately, for a lot of reasons but mainly just... life. doesn’t that suck sometimes? but i really, truly hope everyone is doing well and you + your loved ones are staying safe. (long reflection + tumblr fic after the cut, lol)

i’ve been in kind of a funk with writing since the last time i “had” to do it, which was 12 days/sterek secret santa like, 6 months ago. it’s frustrating to me that i went from writing my longest fic ever exactly 2 years ago to having almost zero output now, but i’m trying not to be too hard on myself and i know writing is a really fickle pastime. anyway, this is a really long leadup, but i decided to just release some stuff i wrote into the wild. it’s either here or my google drive, so i might as well see if anyone wants to read it! 

pacific rim is undoubtedly one of my favorite movies of all time (it was only bumped down by into the spider-verse, but they’re almost tied ;D). it came out right after my sterek obsession began, and i always imagined writing a sterek au based around derek and stiles being drift compatible. that whole concept has always been so lovely to me and fits in nicely with some of my favorite soulmate-y tropes. this idea always felt too ambitious, though, and i didn’t write a single word of it until i rewatched the movie in november/december 2019. i wrote the following stuff in an extremely giddy haze over the next few weeks. i’m not good about pushing myself to write, so i never added any more, but i still really like what i had/have! i hope maybe someday i’ll feel the urge to come back to it. but anyway, here’s my completely self-indulgent homage to one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite fandoms. in my au chronology for this, following the events of the first movie, global governments and the ppdc decided to deploy jaegers for continued deep sea exploration to further benefit scientific discovery and avoid wasting such expensive tech/training. this lead to a lot of corporate interference re: treasure hunting, etc. (national treasure, but make it underwater). oh, and werewolves exist (because wouldn’t they make great jaeger pilots?!). also, A SECOND PACIFIC RIM MOVIE WAS NEVER EVER MADE. THE END. laura and derek were copilots before a kaiju-fighting incident forced them into early retirement. laura is still alive, though! (because it’s me.)

***

“Mayday! Mayday! LOCCENT, do you copy? This is Luna Geminae paging for backup. LOCCENT! Danny, we can’t hold them much longer…”

Laura’s growl of frustration rang in Derek’s ear as he strained against the beast.

“Keep holding it, Derek. You can do this. I know you can. They’re so close, Derek, they’ve gotta be. Just a few more—”

Derek never knew how Laura intended to finish that sentence. All he would ever remember was the scream that tore out of her throat. Later, he would describe it as the first time he ever understood the meaning of “bloodcurdling.”

“Laura!” Derek gritted his teeth as pain roared down his left arm, causing his vision to blur and spark white around the edges.

“My arm, Jesus, my fucking… They got my arm, Derek—” 

As water poured into the cabin above and around him, the last thing he remembered hearing was Laura’s anguished howl. Then the sky became fire, and everything went dark.

***

The day of the accident convinced Derek that his world would never stop burning.

For months after, when he lay staring at the ceiling until the early hours of the morning, the staticky shapes his eyes created to fill the darkness always melted and formed a wall of flames no matter how many times he scrunched his eyes shut and buried his face in his pillow. The noises, too — the ambient whoosh of the Dome’s ventilation system and the soft heart-like thud of the power grid soon coalesced into a unified, rhythmic chant that sounded more and more like Laura’s scream the longer Derek listened: Derek! Help!

In the days and weeks following their accident, Derek had tried every trick he could think of to reassure his subconscious that Laura was alive and safe, and would remain so even after she left his line of sight. For almost a week after she was released from the medical bay, he slept in the spare bunk above her. As reticent as he normally was to invade Laura’s privacy any more than he had to, experiencing her near-loss allowed panic and instinct to envelop Derek’s frayed nerves. He never fully explained it to Laura, but he didn’t have to — she never questioned his presence, nor did she point out that Derek always waited to fall asleep until he was certain she had already drifted off. 

Eventually, though, Derek realized the routine was leaving them both sleep-deprived and irritable. He resolved to move back to his own quarters, not wanting to smother Laura with his relentless, anxious presence. But he knew she still sensed his distress — every evening at 2300 hours, like clockwork, she knocked on his door to tell him goodnight and gently pressed her right palm against her brother’s neck before waving and returning to her own room. It was a routine they continued even now, half a decade beyond the fight that had left their Jaeger decimated. 

They had made progress, which Laura was always quick to remind her younger brother. Nothing could have prepared him for the aftermath of the accident, though, and the dark places where Derek’s mind would drift when there was no one around to distract him. Alone with his thoughts, no reassurance was strong enough to quiet Derek’s memories.

He shifted again in bed, his half-awake mind scrambling to remember the breathing exercises Deaton had taught him over the years.

Inhale through your nose. One. Two. Three. Hold. Exhale through your mouth. One. Two. Three—

Derek!

Start again. Inhale through your nose. One. Two. Three. Hold. Exhale through your mouth. Slower this time.

Good. Again.

***

This comes way after the scene above lol sorry

“Right hemisphere locked. Left hemisphere locked. Vitals are steady. Initiating neural handshake.”

Danny’s voice echoed through Derek’s head as he let his eyes flutter shut and tipped his head back. He’d been anxious about this moment for days now, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t secretly a little — or a lot — excited, too. Drifting was a heady, emotional experience, and if he and Stiles were truly compatible, Derek might finally get to settle the unease he had felt since his connection with Laura was severed.

“Alright,” Danny said. “You should be feeling it in three… two… one.”

Derek’s eyes flew open, but his gaze defocused as he felt his center of gravity list forward before returning.

As his sense of internal balance returned, the tingle of the neural link fizzed over his scalp. There it is. Slowly, then all at once, he felt the rush of Stiles’ mind meeting his own. Their emotions flowed over one another like water, memories flashing and sensations pulsing before slipping away into their shared flow of awareness. Derek had trained himself long ago to let himself float until the waters steadied, and he could feel Stiles, ever perceptive, do the same.

“Neural handshake established and holding at 100 percent.”

Without having to think twice about the gesture, Derek felt his knuckles meet his palm as he dipped into a customary bow. As he and Stiles led Luna in her first exploratory steps, Derek felt the weight of any lingering fears melt away.

With Laura, Derek had always felt like they were extensions of one another, movements and decisions cascading seamlessly from a fully unified thought process. Drifting with Stiles, though, felt unlike anything Derek had ever experienced. They were two sides of the same coin — each aggressive and reserved in equal, opposite measure. If Derek and Laura were reading from the same script, he and Stiles were finishing each others’ sentences as they improvised the same scene. 

When they first met, Derek had found Stiles anything but graceful — but now, as they nearly seemed to glide across the ocean floor, he felt foolish for not realizing the instinctive adjustments and calculations stiles was constantly making based on his surroundings. As they steered Luna across the testing ground, Derek felt his temples begin to thrum with an energy he hadn’t felt in years. Best of all, he knew Stiles felt it too — he could literally trace the path of his elation as it wrapped around Derek’s senses and amplified his own excitement.

“How are you doing?” Derek shouted across the rig. It wasn’t a question he needed to ask verbally, but he chose to anyway, knowing it would help ground them both in the present moment and prevent any stray thought spirals from taking over their link.

“So good, dude. This is — this is unreal,” Stiles replied, slicing through the air with his left arm to test the angle of the jaeger’s knuckle daggers.

Derek smiled. “Not exactly like the simulators, huh?”

“Nothing like the simulators, man. Holy shit.”

As they continued to acclimate to the drift, Derek took Stiles through a few more of Luna’s signature maneuvers. Stiles’ extensive research showed, and combined with the knowledge he and Derek now shared, the moves seemed to come naturally.

“Do you want some music?” He and Laura always played music when training, but he didn’t want Stiles to feel—

“That’s all I want right now, Derek.” Derek’s grin broadened as Stiles flicked through the controls hovering in front of him. A heavy bass line thrummed through the cabin, and Derek finally did what he never thought he would be able to again in his lifetime: he let his mind relax and free-fell into the drift.

***

Two hours after he and Stiles had eaten dinner and finally parted ways, Derek still couldn’t stop thinking about their drift.

That wasn’t unusual, all things considered — emotional transfer was common, especially for werewolves and especially during the first few drifts with a new partner.

Every time Derek thought about his connection with Stiles, though, and the experience of their emotions weaving together, his mind kept snagging in one place. It was a place that had struck Derek even during the high of the neural handshake, not because it felt odd or foreign, but because it felt hauntingly familiar — but looked ugly and sinister looming over someone else. 

It was anguish. It was a grief that had been doused in shame and set alight. It was a feeling of loss and self-loathing that made Derek feel like he was suffocating. It was exactly the way Derek had felt every day for years after the fire, and again after the accident. 

He had tried to explain it to Laura as dispassionately as possible all the times she chided him for blaming himself or expressing guilt over what happened to their family, but he never knew how to describe it until he experienced it through Stiles’ memories. It was sore, like a bruised rib, a persistent ache that radiated out from the point of impact and lingered at the edge of his consciousness. Distractions might be able to push away some of the pain, but as long as he kept breathing, it would always be there.

Derek hadn’t seen exactly where Stiles’ pain radiated from, but it seemed to shroud the memories of his mother especially strongly. Stiles told him she had been sick, though — why would he feel guilty about her death?

He sat up, his leg bouncing as he fidgeted absently with a hangnail. Since deciphering what that unexpected shared emotion reminded him of, Derek couldn’t stop thinking about it. This, he knew, was normal too — without an outlet, emotional transfer tended to create a feedback loop as a co-pilot bounced back and forth between their own memories and their partner’s. 

Before he could talk himself out of it, Derek shot up and strode to the door. It was late, almost midnight, and the full body experience of drifting had left Derek racked with fatigue. But — he just wanted to talk to Stiles. To be near him, again, as if it were a substitute for the feeling of absolute synchronicity they had just shared. It would only take a few minutes.

He was so distracted by his own jumbled thoughts that it took him a moment to register who stood just outside his door as he flung it open — it was Stiles, hand paused in mid-air.

“Stiles.” Very eloquent, Derek, he chided himself with an internal voice that sounded suspiciously like Laura.

“Oh— Well. Um. Hi.” Stiles gave a small wave before shoving his hand in his pocket. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were about to—“

“I was about to find you.”

Stiles paused. “Really?”

Derek stepped back, nodding toward the doorway. “Really. Do you want to come in?”

As he and Stiles stood facing each other silently, Derek scrambled for exactly what he wanted to say. Everything was so effortless when they were in the drift. Why was it so hard to find the words now?

To his relief, Stiles was the one who broke the silence. “Sorry, I’m sure you’re tired… I’m just kind of keyed up, I guess, and I couldn’t—“ Stiles ducked his head down. “I don’t know. I thought it might help to see you.”

“Don’t apologize. You have good instincts,” Derek assured him. “And I— I wanted to see you too,” he added, feeling the tips of his ears heat. 

He could almost feel Stiles’ sigh of relief in his own chest. “Can I sit?”

“Of course.” Derek scooped a discarded pile of clothes off his bed and gingerly sat down after Stiles, mindful of the careful space between them. “Are you feeling okay?”

Stiles’ eyebrows jumped. “Yeah, I feel fine, I really do, but I just feel… jumpy, I guess. Which is normal for me, but I can tell this is different. I don’t know how I know, but…” he trailed off, gesturing abstractly in front of him.

Derek nodded. “I know what you mean. You can’t really prepare for the drift until you’ve done it,” he said, remembering how disjointed he felt after his first few test runs. “But it gets easier,” he added.

Stiles shook his head. “I’m not worried about it. I trust you.” His eyes shot up to meet Derek’s, as if challenging him to dispute the steady, honest heartbeat behind his words. 

Derek was surprised to feel something behind his eyes sting at the pronouncement. He looked away from Stiles’ scrutinizing gaze, but he felt the other man’s eyes continue to study him. “I’m glad. I— that means a lot to me.”

Stiles nodded, remaining thoughtfully silent. Derek sensed he wanted to ask something, but wasn’t ready to admit it on his own.

“Is there anything I can do?” Derek asked gently, eyes seeking Stiles’ again.

Stiles looked pointedly away and bit at his thumbnail. “Um. It sounds stupid now. But I read… I read that physical contact can help,” he mumbled, so quickly Derek might not have caught it without his magnified hearing.

He realized Stiles’ admission may have felt embarrassing for a human, but for Derek, it was almost a relief. He reached forward slowly and cupped his hand over Stiles’ shoulder with a light squeeze. 

“It’s not stupid. You felt how intense the drift is. When you separate from a complete mental overlap, it can be disorienting. And you know how tactile wolves are — that makes it even harder for us, so you’re probably getting some of this from my own emotional bleed.” He didn’t miss the way Stiles melted into his touch, his whole body swaying into their point of contact.

Stiles nodded. “Yeah. That makes sense. Thanks,” his gaze flicked up to meet Derek’s.

“Do you—“ Derek didn’t really know how to ask for more contact. It came so naturally with other werewolves, so he’d never really had to think about it before. “I don’t want to touch you in a way you’re not comfortable with. But if you want to lay down, or you want me to lay down or…” He took a sharp, steadying breath. “I’m trying to say that I understand, and I think it will make us both feel better, and I’m fine with whatever level of contact you’re okay with.”

Stiles laughed, a bright and unexpected break in the tension. “Jesus. Listen to us. I feel ridiculous, but— Thank you. You’re very considerate.” He paused, expression drawing almost imperceptibly tighter. “I want that too, though. I want you to feel comfortable. If you’re not, if there’s anything I do— I promise I’ll ask, first, and if you can tell me, I want you to.” 

Derek felt a lump rise in his throat. Stiles’ words were sincere, but carefully chosen. He wasn’t sure how much of his own memories Stiles had observed, but it seemed to have been enough to understand that physical touch had once been a powerful weapon wielded against him.

“Thank you,” he answered quietly, before gently tugging at Stiles’ arm. “Here, lay down.”

The bed was barely wide enough for both of them to lay side by side, but it was just enough space for both men to settle on their backs with their elbows carefully layered between them. Derek hesitated for a moment before angling his head against Stiles’ neck. “Is this okay?”

Stiles hummed in agreement, the back of his hand flitting against Derek’s so softly he almost thought he imagined it. “This is perfect.” He inhaled deeply through his nose and tilted his head closer to Derek’s. They lay silently for a handful of minutes, and the rhythmic in-out of Stiles’ breathing nearly lulled Derek to sleep.

Suddenly, Derek felt Stiles still. “Why were you about to come look for me?”

Derek huffed. “I wanted to see you.”

“What, you had to check in on the rookie who can’t handle a drift?” Stiles’ tone was light, devoid of any real offense, and he jostled his shoulder gently against Derek’s.

“You did great. If anything, I— I hadn’t done it in so long, and Laura was my only co-pilot before you.” Derek frowned, remembering the heavy emotions of Stiles’ that had ensnared him earlier. He didn’t want to overwhelm Stiles, but he also wanted him to know that he both empathized with and thought highly of him. 

“I never thought I would get in a rig again,” Derek continued. “I don’t think I trusted myself enough. I carry… I carry a lot of guilt, Stiles. But when I thought about piloting with you, the guilt didn’t win. You’re the first person who’s been capable enough, smart enough, strong enough, that I didn’t have to worry.” 

Stiles didn’t respond at first, and a flash of panic seized Derek before he felt strong, warm fingers curl around his own.

“I won’t let you down,” Stiles said, his voice nearly a whisper and rough with emotion.

“I don’t think you could,” Derek whispered back, before he let his eyes slip shut and exhaustion overtake him.

***

When Derek awoke the next morning, he was startled — but it wasn’t in reaction to the way Stiles had draped himself over Derek in his sleep. Feeling Stiles’ arms around his waist felt oddly natural. The surprising part was how well he had slept — it was the first night of uninterrupted slumber he could remember having in months, if not longer.

***

yeah so... that’s all for now! if you read this, thanks and i hope you’re doing well!!! ❤️ 

[thelogbookproject]

The Unity of Skovlan, Entry 23: The Ambush

The Unity of Skovlan is an upcoming unofficial supplement to Blades In The Dark about the fall and rise of the Skovlander people. This series explores what it is all about in the leadup to its September release.

The Ambush is an interesting early Mission, all about timing and opportunity — and about restraint in the face of civilians. Here’s the briefing:

I wanted an early Mission to get out of the big cities and show off the small-town reality of Skovlan. That said, it’s mostly set dressing, as the ambush of the convoy is going to happen quickly enough that the Soldiers aren’t going to spend too much time interacting with ordinary folk.

Every Mission comes with an Opposition section, describing the overall nature of the foes they’ll be facing and introducing the dangers. This section, like the briefing and objectives, is available to the players ahead of taking the Mission so they’ll have some idea of who they’re up against. In this case, the critical details are the two dozen total soldiers and the six vigilant guards with Lieutenant Farris. Two dozen is simply too many for Alx Squad to reasonably expect to just shoot out, even with a surprise attack. If the Squad wants the carriage, they’ll need to take on at least seven Imperials, which will outnumber them easily.

These are three of the five Optional Objectives for the Mission. The first one there is the big prize, but is quite difficult compared to just stopping the convoy. The second indicates the potential for collateral damage in this Mission, and will make players more cautious. The last is a challenge mode for the Mission — no gunshots against more than twenty potential soldiers is tough, but considering it’s free Valor if the players can get creative, it’s generally inspiring to players. It also guides Soldier selection, as Garm is much less help if you can’t fire guns, and will change how Tillery behaves significantly. On the flip side, Calibri and Kelld are excellent choices for the Ambush, as both of them excel at taking down foes without firearms.

I’ll be showing off two Areas today. This one, The Town Square, is where the Mission is most likely to go wrong, pivoting from whatever careful plans the Squad has made (in play or through Flashbacks) into improvisational action. Andrasch can help if the players manage to get hold of the carriage this early, and their inclusion here hints to the GM that even just getting into the carriage won’t be enough and that the players also ought to crack the safe. The Clock determines which path things will go down next — the Road Out, which is the next Area I’ll show off, or the Mine, which I won’t be showing today.

If the players don’t get the carriage turned around in the town, they’ll manage to get out into the open and pick up speed. This is a dangerous moment, and everyone’s Position gets worse with the rain and the speed, but it’s just as dangerous for the Imperials. At this point, it’s very easy to stop the carriage from reaching its destination — four actions and either it’s stopped (if the players manage to fill the left Clock) or it goes over the edge. In this way, the Road Out makes it pretty darn easy to achieve the Mission’s Primary Objective of preventing the carriage’s contents from getting away, but it’s definitely tougher to achieve some of the Optional Objectives — there’s precious little time to capture the carriage, and not using any guns is much harder once the Mission has reached this point. I’m not showing The Mine today, but it presents an interesting alternative to The Road Out. It’s harder to stop the Imperials from getting away with the carriage’s contents, but it’s also much less likely to simply slip from their grasp by going over a cliff.

There are a couple Missions like The Ambush in the campaign, where the whole Mission is actually expected to go very quickly in a burst of intense action, a strong contrast to The Factory, where careful motion and precise action can prevent things from breaking out into chaos.

Next time, I get to show off the last of the Straining Missions, and one of my absolute favorite Missions period, The Glory!

The Unity War releases for PWYW on September 1, 2023. Check out https://tinyurl.com/tuos-details for the rest of this series! Sign up for my Patreon at https://patreon.com/thelogbookproject for a preview, and full early access to the game! See you Friday!

[barbariccia]

as we get off the transport that takes us deeper into omega, where archangel has been pinned down, we’re greeted by a batarian soldier in blue suns armour, one of the three main gangs of omega.

Shepard: The recruiter was a little vague.

Salkie: We wouldn’t get many hires if everyone knew the truth. Archangel’s holed up in a building at the end of the boulevard over there. He’s got superior position, and the only way in is over a very exposed bridge. It’s a killing ground. But he’s getting tired, making mistakes. We’ll have him soon enough.

we offer to go all gung-ho and charge the fucker, but the suns and the other gangs have a plan in position - they’re recruiting freelancers as a distraction, so an infiltration team can sneak around the building archangel’s in and break in that way.

Jacob: Sounds like a suicide mission to me.

Salkie: Pretty much. But you look like you can handle it.

we go on in to the complex, and EDI chimes over our comms to tell us that while it’s scanned the surrounding area, there’s no other paths to archangel than the one we’re going to be following, so, thanks, EDI? it also tells us that the gangs have heavy mechs and a gunship, and suggests we might want to weaken them before we go in.

“Save Here,” says the Very Obviously Final Checkpoint Before The Boss.

you do get the chance to talk to the heads of the other gangs - Eclipse and Blood Pack, headed by a salarian and a Krogan, respectively - but i skipped out on talking to them bc 1) i’ve had enough of stupid sexist gangs anyway and 2) they aren’t really going to be willing to share info with a freelancer unaffiliated with any of their groups. no sweat.

there’s a room with all the heavy mechs EDI mentioned, with a datapad that mentions the gangs possibly working together to usurp aria in the future, so we file that away for future use. and reconfigure the targetting parameters on one of the mechs.

this is about where i started cackling. i love chaos.

speaking of chaos, the walkway is pretty exposed, and there are sniper shots whizzing by you. i have heard tell of a legend where if you stand still, you will get hit precisely once, enough for your shields to go down, and then won’t be hit again, but it’s easy to panic and miss this bc you sprint across from room to room instead.

weird.

the leader of the blue suns is another batarian, who’s working on fixing up the gunship EDI mentioned. we get the chance to ask him some questions before the plan gets under way-- and mid-questions, the sargeant gets a comm to say something’s kicking off, and promptly goes back to work on the ship.

there’s a renegade interrupt here. you pick up a tool that looks like a taser, and approach the guy.

blue suns’ leader taken out, we join the commotion on the walkway, where the freelancers are starting to get their shit together. if you didn’t take the paragon interrupt from earlier at recruitment, the young human that was so eager to join up is in this initial skirmish... and taken out with a single sniper shot. it’s easy enough for us to run up to the building... and start shooting the other freelancers in the back; this turns them hostile, but it’s easy as hell to take them all out and sprint up the stairs.

he knows we’re here, and puts up a single hand to tell us to hold on a second, before taking out another mercenary... and then steps away from the window, puts down his rifle, and takes off his helmet.

Garrus: Shepard. I thought you were dead.

Shepard: What are you doing here?

Garrus: Good to see you, too.

Shepard: I’m just surprised to see you.

Garrus: You and me both. Still, it’s good to see a friendly face. Killing mercs is hard work. Especially on my own.

the comic Mass Effect: Homeworlds depicts the leadup to this scene from a different angle, in which we learn garrus called up his father while shooting mercs over the bridge, something he rarely does, and having a hearteflt chat where they both dance around the issue of something as heavy as imminent death. through his scope, garrus sees a familiar breastplate, and hangs up... because the odds just got a lot better.

we’ve been dead for two years, and garrus still considers us so utterly reliable that he’s no longer afraid of death. i love this plated boy, with his respect and his friendship and his trust.

Shepard: You nailed me good a couple times, by the way.

Garrus: Concussive rounds only. No harm done. Didn’t want the mercs getting suspicious.

Shepard: ... Uh-huh.

Garrus: If I wanted to do more than take your shields down, I’d have done it. Besides, you were taking your sweet time. I needed to get you moving.

we get to have a little catch-up, during which time garrus’ head is hung, and i don’t think he looks shepard in the face at all the whole while. he tells us that he got bored of a normal life after our death; he returned to the citadel and got bogged back down in bureaucracy just like he did the first time we met him, and he came to omega to dish out some justice because it’s easy enough to do here.

Shepard: And since when did you start calling yourself Archangel?

Garrus: It’s a name the locals gave me. For all my good deeds. I don’t mind it, but please... it’s just “Garrus” to you.

i don’t think it’s any coincidence that’s the name he’s been given, considering what omega is in relation to christianity. i’m not expert enough in theology to draw the connections, so we’ll move on.

Shepard: Well, we got here, but I don’t think getting out will be as easy.

Garrus: No, it won’t. That bridge has saved my life... funneling all those witless idiots into scope. But it goes both ways.

we’re pinned down, sure, but that’s not the end of the line. garrus suggests that we simply team up and slaughter anyone that dares come near, and once the ranks have thinned a little, make a run for it.

Shepard: Time to spill a little merc blood.

Garrus: Good to see you haven’t changed.

he hands us the scope to take a peek through, and we see the mechs starting to mobilize; it’s up to us to make it downstairs and keep the enemy at bay.

:’)

[ladysmaragdina]

I know I'm late as hell, but Dishonored 2... Which path should you choose (high/ low chaos) in order to stay the most true to Emily's and Corvo's character? I've always loved reading your Dishonored fics and analyzes, you always make the characters make such good sense =>

So this ask has been sitting in my inbox for over two weeks now. Which I feel terribly guilty about, because I want to give this question the thought and weight and few-thousand words it probably deserves, but… ugh, okay.

Dishonored 1 is my single favorite game, ever.

I’m utterly indifferent to Dishonored 2.

I’m not interested in Dishonored 2.

I have a hard time even saying that I like Dishonored 2.

I’m not going to be able to answer this question, anon. And I feel like I should explain why. (A lot of this is going to be a reatread of what I talked about in my big Dishonored 2 critique I wrote back when the game came out. Whoops)

I played through the game once, the instant it came out – as Emily in a Clean Hands run – and I really, really enjoyed it at first. I loved getting to play as Emily. I loved that the gameplay was objectively better than the first one. I loved how bright and different and rich the world looked. I was so fucking into Dishonored 2! I probably spent an extra couple of hours exploring every nook and cranny of the Royal Conservatory after knocking out the witches, and finding Corvo’s old apartment in the Dust District was a fucking treat. I love the Dishonored world. I wanted to know everything. I was gonna write so much fucking meta and fanfic.

But by the time I got to A Crack In The Slab, I was starting to realize that the story felt… off.

By the time I finished that mission and it was suddenly time to go get rid of the Duke… I mean, I was still having fun! The game was fucking cool! But I raced through the streets leadup to the Duke’s palace without really exploring. I raced through the Duke’s palace like I was speedrunning it. There are entire floors of that level I never saw, and wasn’t remotely interested in seeing. I didn’t care.

I was bored by the time I got back to Dunwall. I was frustrated by how long it took me to work through the many levels of the palace. I just wanted to get to the finale and find out how the story ended. (and then I found the ending profoundly unsatisfying)

I realized none of this mattered.

If this was ultimately a story about stopping Delilah from mantling the Outsider —- as the metaplot seemed to insist – what the fuck were we doing in Karnaca? Why did we care about Karnaca? Karnaca’s problems weren’t my problems, Emily’s problems, at least not in any clear direct way; Karnaca’s problems weren’t even bad. The bloodflies were endemic to the region instead of being a super-scary weird semi-supernatural plague; it might have been a particularly bad year for bloodflies, but it didn’t feel like anything the city couldn’t deal with. The streets were lively. There were nobles sitting in cafes playing guitar music. Shops were open and well-lit. I felt like I could go to the beach and sip mai-tais. Even the most run-down, awful section of Karnaca that we got to see – the Dust District – wasn’t much worse than anything we’d seen on a Tuesday in Dunwall.

And Karnaca wasn’t home. It didn’t feel like it mattered to Emily. Not really. It was in Emily’s empire, sure, but it was an ocean away and it wasn’t under her direct personal governance. And the Emily we met at the start of the game wasn’t interested in governing to begin with. I could never buy the sense that she cared – really, emotionally cared – about the well-being of Karnaca, because Karnaca was relatively fine, and because Emily seemed like she would rather fuck off and abdicate given half the chance. Being exiled from Gristol didn’t feel like exile – it felt like a sunny vacation, a chance for Emily to have cool swashbuckling adventures without the boredom and paperwork of sitting a throne. 

I didn’t understand what I was really doing in Karnaca, and I didn’t understand why it was so urgent and important and needed that I get home to Dunwall. I was just told that I had to get home to Dunwall because Delilah was Bad. And that she was doing some Very Bad Things on the other side of the ocean, and that if she remained unchecked things would get Worse. YOU NEED TO STOP DELILAH, I was told.

But…. gosh, that was on the other side of the ocean. That didn’t seem to affect anything here. Again, Karnaca was fine! Karnaca’s had some issues, but they were were caused firstly by the Duke, not Delilah! What bad things was Delilah really doing? Can we see them? How are they worse than anything any other nobles and rulers are doing? How would installing Emily on the throne be meaningfully different?

What would Delilah’s plan to mantle the Outsider actually mean? The finale gives us a vision of The World As It Should Be, a supremely alien lotus-eater machine where Delilah is absolute monarch; it comes so late in the game, at the absolute eleventh hour, that it doesn’t feel meaningful. It also comes totally out of left field and is so bizarre and extreme that I had no fear that it could ever actually happen. Everything about Delilah’s ascension and ultimate goal is so bizarre and extreme that I had no fear it could ever actually happen. I didn’t understand how it was supposed to happen. The mechanics of magic had never mattered before; why did they matter now? Why did the half-baked explanation for Delilah’s endgame rely on lore from the previous game’s second DLC? (What the fuck, Arkane?)

What was my motivation? Why were my missions important – why did Emily want and need to do these things? What would happen, actually happen, if I failed? What was keeping me from just walking away?

I’m really not sure.

Maybe, just maybe, we could ignore the weird ascension to godhood plot. Maybe my real motivation had nothing to do with Delilah – maybe Emily just wanted to get back to the home that was taken from her. Maybe this was a “take back whats yours” story. But Emily didn’t seem to really want the throne back. The Emily we met at the beginning of the game was bored with governing and wanted out of Dunwall. If we’d had more time and attention paid to that shift in her character, I’d buy it, but you can’t do a complete and instant 180 on a character’s feelings and call it motivation.

Or maybe my real motivation was to get home to Dunwall to save Corvo. But the opening sequence made it seem like Corvo was dead. That’s not a valid motivation either.

Maybe my motivation was to avenge Corvo? I don’t buy that the way I bought Corvo avenging Jessamine in Dishonored 1; in Dishonored 2, Corvo is not the focus and meaning of Emily’s life, and I can’t see her structuring her entire life around fighting back from exile just to avenge him. Emily has hopes and dreams and a distant love interest and isn’t the same hollowed-out husk of vengeance that Corvo is. Sure, he’s her father figure, but I don’t buy that as her sole motivation.

This lack of motivation trickles down to the individual missions of the game.

If I don’t really know or care about what Delilah is doing, why is it so important to stop Breanna Ashworth?

Kirin Jindosh is supposedly making an army of Clockwork Soldiers, but what does that mean? How soon would they be ready, what are the logistics, how powerful are they, how are they worse than Tallboys or other existing technology, what was he going to use them for? Why is it so important to take him out? Couldn’t we just bribe him or write him a strongly-worded letter? I’m going to be the Empress – couldn’t I make his soldiers illegal or shut down his factories? Why do I have to go to such an immediate and awful extreme?

Sure, the Duke is a dick and should probably be replaced by a better ruler. Doing so doesn’t feel important. I’ve never met the Duke. He never did anything to me. Karnaca’s in decent shape, all things considered. Killing or replacing him  feels like taking out the trash.

Where are the stakes?

Why do I care about any of this?

Tangent – I feel like I’ve got to talk about Corvo a bit here. Would Corvo have a different, stronger, more personal attachment to Karnaca? Sure, but I’ve never played Corvo’s route in Dishonored 2 and can’t speak to it. Personally, I always got the sense that Corvo felt like an outsider in Gristol and that he would have tried to distance himself from Serkonos in response to this, and that returning must have felt oddly alien, like an ill-fitting suit. Now, this is a cool thing to explore. It might make him more invested and interested in some aspects of the game – I’m thinking of the Duke and Stilton in the Dust District, specifically – but I don’t think it fixes the core issues about lack of motivation in the overarching plot.

So, let’s talk about that overarching plot. Would Corvo feel more strongly about getting back to Gristol and restoring Emily to the throne and/or bringing vengeance to her “killer”? Probably! Corvo’s arc in Dishonored 2 isn’t about toppling Delilah and seeking vengeance for his own sake, but rather for Emily’s sake (or at least the memory of Emily-who-we-think-is-dead). That’s less selfish and entitled, more emotional and tortured. That’s honestly more interesting to me. But that’s the exact same story we got in Dishonored 1. Corvo’s entire existence in Dishonored 2 feels like a rehash of Dishonored 1. The vengeance arc in Dishonored 2 feels much more muddled and unfocused and distant in comparison. It’s not as good.

I think Corvo’s story and motivation are more clear and pressing and straightforward than Emily’s; but I think Dishonored 1 did that exact same story and motivation much much better. Corvo’s story in Dishonored 2 honestly makes more sense to me than Emily’s story. Which feels utterly backwards! One protagonist has a storyline and motivation that has no real weight or drive or urgency behind it. The other protagonist has a slightly stronger storyline that is still a weaker, fuzzier retread of the first game.

I think Dishonored 2 is badly written.

I like it on the micro level – I like the characters and the levels – but on the macro, i think it’s a confused jumble that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a vengeance story? Is it a story about stopping a supernatural threat? I don’t know, and I don’t think it does either. The game doesn’t manage to mesh those ideas at all, and neither idea holds water on its own. I am utterly confused and turned off by the game’s decision to make the vengeance so un-urgent and impersonal and the villain’s magic-driven plan so distant and obtuse and ill-defined. I think that in deciding to make the scope bigger, it bit off way more than it could chew and lost sight of what matters in storytelling.

Dishonored 1 was a tightly-focused straightforward revenge plot where I understood exactly what I had lost, how much it mattered, and what was at stake. Dishonored 2 is a fucking mess.

I can’t write about which choices Corvo and Emily would have taken because their choices don’t make sense to me; because their existence and participation in this story makes no sense to me; because the story hops from point to point without establishing thematic or plot coherence; because I don’t understand – emotionally, really buy and feel and understand – why I’m meant to give a shit about any of it.

I played the game once, started a High Chaos replay, wandered away from the game after the second mission, and uninstalled. I have no interest in replaying it. I have no interest in ever picking up Death of the Outsider. The fact that the writing seems to be moving away from the vengeance quest and doubling down on its focus on the supernatural (and the fact that they’re dragging back characters – Corvo in Dishonored 2, Daud in DotO – whose arcs had finished) has honestly killed my interest in the franchise at this point. I don’t feel anything about this other than a profound sense of disappointment. 

I wanted to like Dishonored 2. The game is gorgeous and fun and an improvement on the original in many ways. I wanted to answer your question, anon. I truly wish I could, and I’m sorry for how salty this post has become. I’m sure someone else would have fantastic headcanons and insight.

But I just. don’t. care.